What Makes a Senior Software Engineer Resume Stand Out?

Welcome back to the ré review series where I review the résumés that you send in. My name is Nick Coantino and I'm a principal software engineering manager at Microsoft. In this video, we're going to be reviewing a resume together that is from a more senior software engineer with over 12 years of experience compared to some of the other rs that we've gone through together. This one will have a lot more work experience and hopefully we can see how we can compare and contrast this type of resume with some of the other ones. Say for people looking for internships or breaking into tech. Now, a lot of the same common principles will apply as I go to review this. It's just that we're going to have a lot of different experiences that we can draw upon here. If you're interested in having the opportunity for your resume to be reviewed, you can submit it to résuméser.ca. Before I jump over to looking at this resume in more detail, I always want to try and call out the disclaimer that this is not a resume grilling or roasting video. I'm not making fun of the person that sent this in. My goal is to be able to help and that's exactly why this individual and the other individuals have sent in their resumes for me to review. That does mean that if I want to be helpful, I need to find ways to offer constructive feedback. So, I will try to be critical in areas that I think it will help. And I'll also call out the things that I think are awesome. So, with that said, let's jump over to this resume and have a little read through. Okay. Right at the top, we see software engineer full stack in carp.net. So, right there, we're done. Hired on the spot. Okay, just kidding. That's my bias obviously towards C and .NET, but this person is a .NET developer. You can see right at the top in their skill summary section, they call out the 12 plus years of experience in .NET, building scalable applications for Windows, desktop, and web, right? So, I think this skill summary section, just to call it out, is is helpful. if you have an idea of how you would like to summarize a lot of your skills. Now, if you're someone who is more a junior, this might not make a lot of sense because trying to summarize things when you only have a few things to draw upon may not be very helpful. You might want to just use that real estate on your resume for calling out what you can, but when you have a bunch of different things and especially for trying to tailor your resume for different employers, I think this could be a great little strategy for trying to optimize that. So, we can see some of the different technologies they use. We can see Teraric and Dev Express for being utilized for development time and report generation. So those are uh some frameworks that you can use for different controls and things like that. Definitely saves you from having to go roll your own for absolutely everything which is very helpful. You can see agile methodologies and Azure DevOps, Jira, GitHub project. So again familiarizing across these different tool sets that they can be comfortable you know if they had to work in Jira or ADO things like that. I think just at a a glance, right? This person has different experience across these different areas and that could be very helpful just to summarize. If we go look at the structure of this, we'll see professional history, a handful of different jobs even onto the second page and they still call out personal projects which I think is great. We can see education and then at the bottom they have links to some of their profiles and stuff like that. So again, this kind of stuff at the bottom super helpful. If the rest of their application was standout and I want to follow up and see more detail, then I can go check out uh their GitHub. Say their projects were interesting, they seemed applicable, and I wanted to go explore that a little bit more. Great. Now I can go check out their GitHub and poke around. But sometimes I would say that this kind of stuff at the bottom to link out to things. If the rest of the resume hasn't made me go, "Wow, then I'm probably not going to click any further." And the reason why that's the case is because if there's a lot of other résumés to read through, I'm probably going to wait for someone else's resume to make me go, "Wow," before I go click out to find more information. So, if you can do a good job on the rest of it, then having an opportunity to find more information, I think, is very helpful. Okay, let's go back up to the top and start going through some of the professional history. Um, now one thing that they called out in their email that they sent to me when they submitted this was that they felt like some of their resume is not clearly articulating sort of the amount of impact or the scale of the work that they've been able to do. So I think that's something I want to try and keep in mind and see is that how I feel when I read this. They talked about architecting different systems like is that not standing out? So I want to see if that is something that I pick up on or not. Maybe maybe I feel differently about that and I I do feel like that's clearly articulated. So we'll kind of go through that. The first thing and I'm not going to repeat it for every section is we have like uh sort of the notable projects within each work experience. We have a highle view of responsibilities and we have some technologies used. One thing and it's again my personal opinion. They kind of wrote in about how they've uh included technologies and stuff like this sort of explore different success or or not by doing this. And um I think the thing that I would like to see instead of it called out uh quite like this just as an example is I would like to see these things as much as they are relevant sort of alongside the projects just as an example instead of having this kind of statement here. I would just say including within the project the different technology that is applicable. So just a detail I think they said that they had better experience doing uh this kind of thing versus a whole dedicated section. something to play around with. Uh but that was something that they observed. I think again high level being able to see maintain update fix bugs in medical claims applications. So we can understand some of the domain optimizing application for speed and performance to improve user experience. So this gives us uh I would assume a theme for some of the work experience we're going to see below. And then they call out the notable projects. Now, I wanted to highlight this because when I read through this originally, I thought that this was awesome and you'll see across these three points, they've done something that is very, very valuable. I'm going to go through each of them and I want to see if you can pick up on it. Okay, so improved loading time for claims and related data for several minutes down to several seconds, 95% efficiency by splitting the query into digestible chunks, lazy loading asynchronously, and adjusting table indices. Okay. So then architect and develop vendor payment system to track payment to vendors. Subsequently integrated into medical claims web app eliminating 90% of the paperwork and manh hours. And the last one here re-engineer claims processing workflow into seamless linear process enabling users to effortlessly track and manage claims based on their current status. Optimize productivity by reducing manual effort and boosting efficiency by 30%. So, do you see the common thing that's across all of these? I'll give you a little hint. It has to do with numbers. Okay. So, in each one of these, something that they've done is they've quantified the impact. Now, this is not always easy to do, but I think that something that can be a tremendous help when you're trying to convey to a reader just how valuable the work you did is, being able to quantify things can be helpful. Now, what I mean by that is that in some instances when you're talking about a specific domain, right, you might have some of this knowledge about the work you're doing and why it's valuable, sometimes when you're able to back up that claim with something that's numeric and quantifiable and explain it in a way that the reader will understand better, that can really demonstrate and make it clear the impact that you had. So when I see something like improve loading times and then I see 95% efficiency to me this is like and sorry the also several minutes down to several seconds. This whole statement together is like I don't even have to know the domain they're working in but I can truly understand the impact that that has. And then beyond that, I think even better on this first one, they talked about how they did that, right? It's not just like, oh, like I turned on a compiler flag and all of a sudden it was just better. No, it's like I actually had to go do these things. So this very first line I thought was like a really awesome way to call out something that they did roughly how they approached it, you know, obviously at a high level and then the impact that it had. But across the board, all three of these, they talk about something quantifiable. And I think that's something that really stands out. As much as possible, I would encourage people to try and do that where it's applicable. The other thing, I will say this probably in every ré review video, is that every single line you write in your resume, ask the question, why does the reader care about this? Because if you're writing it down and you ask yourself that question and you don't have a good answer for it, take it out. it's not adding value in this case for each one of these things. Why does the reader care about this? It's because I can see the impact of the work that they're having. They did call out around the idea of architecture and building systems, right? So when I see architect and develop vendor payment system and then re-engineered claims processing workflow, these to me seem like larger scale things. So even at this one job, I am starting to get that feeling of this is the scope of impact they've been able to have. It's not just smaller feature work and things like that. I I am getting an idea of something that's a little bit bigger than that. Overall, I really like what they've done for this first one. I think my sort of nitpick that's across all of these is that I'm not a huge fan of just having these listed out this way. I'd rather see them in the body here. But at the same time, like the fact that they've included this kind of stuff, I think is helpful. One note on this as a general statement and it's worth mentioning. Again, I won't repeat it for each section. sometimes listing technologies. If you're looking for getting some real estate back on your resume, if you're applying somewhere where some of this stuff won't make any sense or not offer much value at all and you need more real estate back, take out the technology, right? Just to give you an example, I see net 4.8 net core. I see C listed here. I know sometimes for keywords you want some of this stuff, but like I might not be so keen on listing 4.8 if you at least have net listed. Did I see EF6 and EF Core? So, like, do you need to list out both entity frameworks? I can understand if you're working at a place that has both the legacy and the core version. Sure. I think it's just a way to look across these and see like is this going to be offering much value and if you need the real estate back, take out the the skill or the technology. You have to make that decision. It's a bit more of an optimization. Just something to consider. Okay, let's look at the next job. updated and maintained various applications using ETL signature application on and then they have it listed some archive website and also perform ETL from two various systems and applications from various hospitals and then they have the technologies listed out again notable projects enhance the functionality of the signature applications serial key generator providing the ability to license individual modules within the application individually you'll notice that for a statement like this one here compared to what we saw above right enhance The functionality I have to guess at what that means, right? Providing the ability to license individual modules within the application individually. This one to me seems more like a feature like smaller feature work. And I'm not saying that it is. I have no idea, right? So I have to guess at this compared to some of the other things that were done above where we can see the measurable impact. This one is a little bit harder of a cell to me. I understand what this means, but I don't understand the significance of this is how I would frame that. This person who wrote this very well might be able to explain in much more detail why that's so significant. So me saying this out loud, it's not for me to say, oh, this is a really bad example, don't use this. It's if you think this is significant, I am not getting that from how you wrote it. That's all. So just find a different way to enhance that. Create a multi-threaded Windforms application. Okay, so we see the technology listed in here. Windform application multi-threading. Okay, helpful to know, right? Multi-threading is not a simple thing. So being able to build complex or at least on the surface what seems like complex uh desktop applications, transforming patient data. Then we get into some of this stuff here, right? HL7 uh sorry, my camera is obscuring some of this stuff. So HL7B3 CDA, HL7B3 API, some of this stuff like when we start getting into the terminology, this might not be very applicable. We have to think about who's reading this. So if you're it might be valuable if you're applying to more in the medical space and doing this kind of thing. If not, you might find different ways to even just generalize it and say right like standardized document formats and then standardized library for medical standards, right? If you have a different way to generalize how that's being stated, then the reader might just be able to make more sense of it. I do have a very high level understanding of what they're getting across here. So, I'm just trying to use this as an example to say if you're trying to go somewhere more medical and you want to call out these things because those terms are very applicable, excellent, call them out. Otherwise and this is just more effort. It's it is more timeconuming but finding ways to generalize this kind of thing can perhaps make it more readable and understandable. But overall this seems like decent experience right but the big difference I would say compared to the first one we looked at is like I don't see as much significance here like again I I just think the first one was such a good example of calling out like quantifiable impact that we're we're almost missing that in this second one. I don't want to minimize the impact that this work could have had, but like this opened up the ability to perform the ETL per HL7V3 standards. Like great, but some of this impact is just lost on me the way that this is written unfortunately. So that's my feedback in this particular section. It could be great work experience. This is hard for me to tell. Next one is manage in-house web server. Design, build, and maintain applications which allow employees in various departments to perform duties. Then they talk about the departments included and this part here doesn't seem that valuable but I think sort of the meta point with this is like we get to see some like different stakeholder interactions right so the fact that they're going across departments different stakeholders different sort of like customers that are going to be using the software I think that can be kind of helpful to call out um I might personally again I I just think I'm more of a fan of including some of this stuff that's up here into the into the body of the projects and stuff just my opinion. This is one of those things where I'm saying this stuff and based on the feedback that they've had before the next person they talk to, they might get conflicting feedback. Try this out. If you're having success with it and getting call backs for interviews, excellent. If you're not, maybe try out a different variation where you collapse some of this stuff down. The other quick note, I forgot to mention it is that, and we'll see it in the personal projects, sometimes the way that this is written, literally just the formatting of it is a little bit difficult for me to read. Maybe a personal thing, but because of how it's laid out, it's kind of like it looks like a paragraph, but it's actually like this is a list. This here is a list. Um, that's kind of tricky. I also see in this one they say promoted from software developer to software engineer within the first year due to autonomy, efficiency and completing ahead of deadlines. Like this is interesting. I don't know maybe again maybe this kind of thing I wouldn't call this part notable projects. I would just call like maybe listing this down in this section as more of a list item and calling it like key accomplishments or something might be a different way to do this because again like this kind of statement right in here is interesting. They're talking about like, hey, look, I was able to excel. The whole point of this one here is like, I did better than expected because these things were awesome. I've already read this and then when I made this video and as I'm recording it now, it's almost like I missed it the second time I read through, it kind of just gets lost inside of this body of text. So, just a quick note, the formatting can make a big difference for how much information is retained or observed. Led creation of auto repricer applications. So, this is an example where they're leading something. So that's really cool. Want to be able to call those things out where you have them. Definitely being able to lead projects is a beneficial thing to acknowledge. Price change according to rule sets in the application by users. When we get into some stuff like this, this allowed products to maintain price competitiveness and earn first listing on Amazon buy box driving sales up. This kind of thing is like it's interesting, but it's almost like again, let's ask the question, why do I care about that as the reader of this? Perhaps if I'm working at a place that has similar needs, then I can say, hey, this feels very relevant. Otherwise, like when we ask the question, why do I care about this? This particular sentence that I've highlighted is like this is just more information about the project being built, but I am not understanding why I need to care about that. Again, it's not meant to be critical. It's like I want to know about this person's ability to deliver excellence, right? I want to know about their ability to problem solve. I want to know about their ability to go learning things and how quickly they ramp up on stuff and troubleshoot all all these things. And this sentence doesn't help me with any of that. Not that it's bad. I think what they're trying to do, it makes sense. They're trying to explain what this project is, but when I read this, and this is going to be a really harsh way to say it, like I don't care. It's an interesting project, but this sentence here, I don't actually care about this. So, same thing on this part before. prices change according to rule sets in the application by users. I feel like what they could have done here is spent a little bit more time explaining the significance of this and their role in it and less about what that project actually was. They could probably do half a sentence or a sentence on what it is and then like here's why this was an awesome project for me. That's I think how I might reframe that. Design and develop web form application for accounting department. So again we get to see some uh some cross department work here. Different stakeholders involved which assisted in reconciling purchase orders, invoice and payments is cut down. Here we go. This cut down the time needed to match purchase order, invoice and payments by an average of 85%. 6 hours down to 1 hour average. Boom. We're right back in that first sort of work experience where we can call out here's impact I delivered. This is awesome, right? This type of thing is like as someone reading a resume, I don't have to know any of the details, right? Like this project they listed here, they're explaining what the project is, but this part they're telling me the impact they had. I care about that. I don't need to know what the project is. Knowing what the project is becomes more beneficial when you are hyperfocusing, in my opinion, on a particular job role. If I'm just going to scroll down a little bit. Yeah, we're going to see in the notable projects, I have a really good example where their project really stands out for something and I'll walk through that. If they had work experience like that, I would be like, "Tell me all about that." When you start getting into some of the details, I'm going to keep highlighting this one. I apologize, but when I keep seeing more details like this, if it's not relevant to the job that they're applying for, then I'm like, I don't I don't know why it's here. Okay. Then create a QuickBooks integration for inventory and sales. Allowing seamless transfer of inventory. Um, tell me more about this. Right. Allowing seamless transfer of inventory and sales from our in-house solutions into QuickBooks. What kind of impact did that have? Why was that such a valuable thing? Was that a pain point? I'm assuming it was. That's why it was done. But you told me right up here like the value and the impact that had. Do the same thing for this other one. I would love to see that because I'm sure it had an impact, right? I'm sure it did. Tell me about it. Let's go to the next job experience before we jump into the projects. Again, I'll skip over the top part. We'll go through the projects themselves. Reconfigured, enhanced, and customized web-based point of sale system and PHP to fulfill requirements. Increasing security and privacy. Okay. Reconfigured, enhanced, and customized. These are very, very, very general. This tells me what the thing was. NMPHP. Okay. I think the only thing that I get out of this first one is they worked on web-based point of sales systems and PHP. That's it. The rest of that sentence again, not to be I don't mean to for it to sound hyper critical, but the rest of the sentence offered no value to me. To fulfill unique requirements, that's what happens at every job. Increasing security and privacy, that's probably hopefully becoming more and more of a standard at every job. And then this part, reconfigure, enhance, and customize. Sounds pretty pretty standard. So this is the part right here. Like if you had a bullet point that just said this, to me it would be the same as that full sentence. The reason I'm saying this again for the person who submitted this resume or if yours looks like this, it's not that this is a bad thing, right? This experience could be great experience. I don't understand anything more than what is written right here. That's all. Right. So, if you're like, "Oh, man. Well, what about this, that, and that?" Then great. Put that instead. And I think that will offer more value. Lead design and development. Okay. Right. Leading things again at this person's experience level. Great to call these types of things out. Custom Drupal theme for bookstore, which integrates available inventory with the website. Minimizing phone calls to the store, driving more sales, and increase profits. I realize this one was probably a little bit of time ago. They might not know this stuff. If they have any way to call this kind of thing out in terms of quantitative call it out, right? Minimizing phone calls to the store by what percentage? driving this uh more sales to increase profits like by you know an extra dollar a year by an extra 100% profits like tell us tell us the impact of this work because otherwise led design and development a custom Drupal theme that is the only thing I see once you start adding in numbers here then I start to see the impact that that has so that's the framing that I'm adding in here create a live inventory website plugin consuming site link rest API this part here consuming site link rest API only really valuable if you're trying to call out your experience working with site link if not doesn't really matter uh to provide a live feed of pricing and inventory again just to give you an example I read this I could see created live feed of pricing and inventory that's all that's the only value I get out of this uh this sentence and I'm not saying that I realize as I'm the words are coming out of my mouth I'm not saying that that's a bad thing like this is this is good created a live feed of pricing inventory Great. So if you're like Nick, but there's so much more to that like the reason why this is so beneficial is these reasons, put them in here cuz or change how this is written cuz that's all I'm getting. Live feed of pricing and inventory developed application to allow it to upload, share, and view documents. Okay, so I have an understanding what that means for client projects across the web on mobile devices. Now we're going some crossplatform stuff as well. increasing efficiency and coordination of IT staff. Give me some numbers. Again, this one is hard. I understand because it's a long time ago. Might not have the numbers, but this is the thing, right? If you had the numbers, you could call out the impact. Like, put it in there because it's really going to make it stand out. Okay, let's jump down to the projects. Biggest feedback across the projects is again the formatting. I like the idea. I don't like the execution of it. Just to call it out. Problem solution problem solution problem solution. Like I like the problem solution idea. Do not like the formatting. This block of text is like really difficult for me to to read through. It's one of those things I I I'm not sitting personally and reviewing hundreds and hundreds of RS. If I had to and I got to something that was going to strain me when I'm reading it, I will gloss over it. Why? Because I have if I had to do hundreds of résumés, I have hundreds of others to get to, right? So, try to consider that the formatting could basically make or break if someone's going to scan over it or actually read it in detail. Adding pictures to Windows lock makes them get distorted. And then they talk about how they solve that. To me, the reason I really like this is because it's telling me what this person was learning about and solving. When I talk about personal projects, this is what I love to see. I don't care a lot of the time what the project is. I'm just interested in what you're learning about. That's why you're building the projects, isn't it? You're trying to show that you're able to go learn and practice these things. So, tell me all about that. I love the idea. Don't like how it's formatted. Resize images looks uh incomplete due to empty space after resize. Okay. Okay, so how do you solve that? Allow user to specify a background to fill. So they're talking about how they're progressing through their feature development on this. Adding background images makes it harder to focus on the main image. Adding a blur effect. Okay, so now they're talking about creating something more advanced. And then you can see in this next one, blurring multiple images greatly increases processing time. Now they go to talk about they leveraged AI. They created an optimized algorithm, reduced the time from almost 1 minute per image down to 1 to 2 seconds. This is super cool, I think. Right. I don't love the formatting of this, but I think it's super cool that they talk about what they're building, the problems they're trying to solve, trying to learn through. They built it in WPF. If you're not familiar with WPF, I realize most viewers on my channel are going to be .NET and C developers. If you're not, WPF is Windows Presentation Foundation. So, it's a desktop framework for building in .NET, you know. So, I can see what technology they're using here. That's cool. But yeah, I think this is super cool that they were talking about this iterative process and how they're trying to refine the thing that they're building. I love this. I think it's really cool. this one. When I scan this ahead of time, when I talk about projects, if you have a bunch of projects and you're trying to stand out, if you have projects or like same thing applies for your work experience, if you can find particular things to highlight that are very applicable for the job you're going for, do that. Those of you might not know some of my background. I currently work at Microsoft. It's been almost 5 years for me. Prior to Microsoft though, I worked at a digital forensics company. If someone had this resume and they were applying to where I was working at the digital forensics company, I want to talk about why a project like this could really stand out. Okay, so the problem after performing a data recovery of an old hard drive, the recovered data is nested 2 to 10 levels deep with subdirectories. solution. Built an application which allows a more flattened view of files, displaying the shortest path containing files and grouping those files by the path, allowing filtering of files by file extensions found, file size, and other parameters, options to move, blah blah blah. Right? They are talking about being able to build a file explorer. In a digital forensic space, you're dealing a lot with files. You're dealing a lot with data recovery. That's the whole point of digital forensics. Could you imagine getting a resume where let's pretend that as we scroll through some of the work experience we're like yes it's good they had impact but maybe overall this is the hundth resume you've seen and you're like they're all kind of familiar they're all kind of similar they're all like they're all pretty good and then you're reading through the projects and you go boom this person has something that is literally representative of some of the work that we might be doing in digital forensics automatically stands out this is a lucky chance. I'm assuming this person didn't go realize that I have background in digital forensics and they're like, I'm going to make my resume so it stands out. No, but if you have different projects or different types of work experience you can highlight specifically for roles, think about that. That might be a really good opportunity, especially if you've been, you know, applying to a ton of jobs and you come across one and you're like, man, that is the one I really want that. Is there anything you can be doing about tailoring your resume to that one? You might want to make an exception. Instead of doing the one that you've been sending out to everyone, maybe go refine your resume. Optimize it for that job. But overall, I think that I just wanted to say this is a super cool one to come across because even if they're not calling out specifically, like I was talking about like quantitative impact, even if they don't have that, this one stands out to me because of the domain that it's in. So super cool to be able to call something like that out. But overall, I think this is great based on some of the questions they had at the beginning regarding uh sort of architecting and system level uh work for desktop applications and stuff. I did get that feeling personally that they have done a bunch of that across their work experience. So that's less of a concern from my perspective. I think that's not the feeling I got. So overall, I think this has done quite well. Like I said, this first job, the way that they wrote, uh, these projects, loved this, and I think that they could probably go through the rest of their work experience and apply the same methodology there. So, uh, great work and I seriously wish this person a ton of success their job hunt. So, if you'd like your resume reviewed, please consider submitting it to résumé[email protected]. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time.